Huish was always bustling, or at least shambling with alacrity; whereas Gabriel went about his lightest business with ponderous deliberation and puzzled frown. Both were men of forty who had done the right thing early in the war; they had nothing else in common except the inglorious job which they owed to their respective infirmities. Huish, after many rejections on the score of his, had yet contrived to land in khaki at Le Havre on the last day of the first battle of Ypres; and though he had never been nearer the fighting than he was with us, no one who knew his story or himself could have grudged him his 1914 ribbon. His canine delight, on learning that he was just entitled to it, was a thing to see and to enter into.
Let us hope Gabriel did; he was not very charitable about Huish behind his back. It was Gabriel's boast that he had 'never been in the 'ands of the police,' and his shame to inform us that Huish had. But the sun has its spots, and the overwhelming superiority of Huish in munitions of altercation was perhaps some excuse. Daily we caught his rising voice and Gabriel's rumbling monotone; what it was about we never knew; but Huish had all the nerves in the kitchen, and the shepherd must have been a heavyweight on them at times. Their language, however, as we heard it under mutual provocation, was either a considerable compliment to the Y.M.C.A. or an exclusive credit to themselves. Gabriel was duly archangelic in this regard; the other's only freedom a habit of calling a thing an 'ell of a thing, and on occasion an Elizabethan expressiveness, entirely inoffensive in his mouth.
I wanted their photographs to take with me when I left, and had prevailed upon them to get taken together at my expense. The result lies before me as I write. Both are washed, brushed up, shaven and uniformed out of daily knowledge. Huish stands keenly at attention, as smart as he could make himself; it is not his fault that the sleeves of his new tunic come down nearly to his finger-tips. On his right shoulder rests the forgiving paw of Gabriel; a perceptibly sardonic accentuation of the crow's-feet round his eyes may perhaps be attributed to this prompting of the shepherd's heart or the photographer's _finesse_. But the pose was a consummation; it was in the course of a preliminary transaction that their excessive gratification obliged me to disclaim benevolence.